TL;DR – The picture you’ve seen circulating was from 2016.
It’s been less than a month since the National Environment Agency’s mandatory table-clearing initiative began.
To be exact, the initiative kickstarted on 1 June 2021 – whereby diners are required to clear their table litter which includes used tissues, wet wipes, straws, canned drinks, plastic bottles, and food remnants.
Barely into a month since the initiative started, a picture of a mess at the tray return station was seen circulating Facebook and WhatsApp groups lately.
While I am not quite sure what’s the rationale behind when the person decides to start circulating this photo, but what I do know is, in this day and age of fake news, we really need to have a healthy dose of skepticism and not allow ourselves to fall into the victim of fake news without fact-checking.
And true enough, the picture that has been “Forwarded many times” isn’t recent at all.
In fact, the picture was from 2016.
Yes, a five-year-old post.
Now, here’s a more recent photo of the tray return station,
If it’s not obvious enough, I’m leaving this here for comparison’s sake:
You can definitely tell that the provision of the infrastructure and facilities has improved a lot too!
NEA has also put out a post in response to the old photo, you can read it below:
Now, run along and go tell your friends and family that you’ve got another “fake news” busted.
